


Cave Me In

by snarkwhal



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkwhal/pseuds/snarkwhal
Summary: On the night before the battle at Gronder, Byleth cannot sleep and so she attempts to find peace in the cathedral. Instead she finds the ghosts and monsters that have been haunting her for months.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 3
Kudos: 67





	Cave Me In

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I was inspired to write this thanks to some lines from Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo. If anyone knows the “you might make me a better man” and “you might make me a monster” conversation, that’s what I’m referring to. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy! And shout out to any other Fire Emblem fans who read LeighBardugo! Ya girl is working on a Dimileth Grishaverse au.

Glaring at the slit of moonlight shining from under her door, Byleth sighed for the thousandth time that night. She didn’t know how long she’d been up at this point, but she worried that if she blinked, dawn’s edge would soon creep through the doorway’s cracks.

Tomorrow they would march for the empire and Gronder Field, and so Byleth ran over their inventory and strategies again and again, hoping that the monotony would put her to sleep. At this point she’d memorized how many arrows Ashe always carried into battle, the exact range that Mercedes and Annette’s spells could reach, the amount of lances Dimitri had broken in the weeks prior. To her knowledge, he’d broken at least one in the last battle, his bloodlust and desire for revenge getting the better of his control yet again.

In the five years leading up to this point, Byleth wondered how many times he’d had a brush with death thanks to his blinding rage. How many times had he run into hoards of imperial soldiers alone? She was sure that in the days to come he would do the same, and if Edelgard were to lead the Adrestian troops? Dimitri’s vision would tunnel and he’d be set on nothing else except getting her head. In that state, someone could easily strike him down from behind if there was no one to protect his blind spot.

But would she be enough to do that? What if they got separated? What if she got too distracted by other enemies? What if something did happen and she was too late to use her divine power to save him?

Nights like these made her miss Sothis the most. Byleth glanced at the spot where the goddess had always sat when they spoke in her room, remembering the way she would chastise her about how she led the students, or how she worried about them even on weekends. If Sothis were here tonight, Byleth could at least talk to her to pass the time. It’d be much more comforting than counting the dust motes dancing across her vision. Even just feeling her presence would be enough.

Sitting up, Byleth decided that there would be no better way to clear her mind than with a walk to the cathedral. It would most likely be empty this late, and she could just sit in a pew by the alter while she tried to gather her thoughts.

As she stood, slipping on her jacket and boots, Byleth caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The slivers of light coming through the cracks of her doorway cast shadows on her face, making the hollows of her cheeks and bags under her eyes more severe than in the daytime. In her white nightgown and with her green hair, which now looked so pale it nearly matched the cotton of the dress, she looked like a ghost. The last few months had certainly taken their toll. Hopefully, she wouldn’t run into Lysithia and frighten the poor girl into casting a dark spell.

**

Save for the knights on patrol, the monastery felt abandoned at this hour. There was no sound of skittering claws from the resident cats and dogs. No telltale flap of leathery wyvern wings or feathery pegasi. The knight’s lanterns were so far off that Byleth had only the moon to guide her, its silver light bouncing off shards of glass forgotten in the clean up. If it weren’t for the click-clack of her heels on the cobblestone, Byleth would’ve thought she was simply a spectre floating through some fragment of her past life.

She had jumped so quickly into battle after waking up, her survival instincts and muscle memory from swinging her sword taking over, but off the battlefield? Byleth was just floating through her everyday life. Though the rest of her students had accepted her return with open arms and tried to update her on the past five years as best they could, there were still huge gaps. Huge gaps that she could not fill because she hadn’t been there for them. Huge gaps where she could’ve, she would’ve, done anything. And now as she tried to make up for lost time, as she tried filling those gaps in, she felt like all she did was bring up the past, the old days she wanted to return to with them.

Byleth knew her divine power couldn’t turn back time by days or months, let alone years, yet the memories of academy days were so vivid in the moonlight. With every turn around a corner, she saw a new ghost. There was the ghost of her father as he made his way to the knight’s hall. There was the ghost of the Golden Deer house, sprawled on the grass star-gazing. The ghost of Edelgard sitting on a bench as she spoke to Hubert. The ghost of Dimitri as he led her to the goddess tower on the night of the ball. 

_I should’ve known that one day you would be haunting me as well._

Remembering her reunion with Dimitri, Byleth laughed at his words. _If only he could see me right now,_ she thought.

**

Upon arriving at the cathedral, Byleth noticed a dark figure looming by the alter. Though the moon barely illuminated him, she didn’t need light to identify the man hunched in a heavy blue cape, gripping his lance like a life line. Trying her best not to startle him, she inched her way down the aisle to where he stood, back facing her, like a statue.

“Dimitri?”

Her mistake.

Before she could blink, Dimitri had spun on his heel, pointing Areadbhar at her chest. With an equally lightning fast response, Byleth had stepped back and reached for the dagger hidden in her boot, futilely pointing it toward him. A moment of complete stillness passed before their gazes met, Byleth catching a nearly imperceptible hint of confusion in Dimitri’s icy eye. Putting her hands up, she dropped the dagger to the floor.

“It’s you,” he grunted, finally lowering Areadbhar and turning back to face the alter, “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Byleth said as she moved to stand next to him.

Standing on Dimitri’s left side, where his eyepatch sat on his face, Byleth was able to observe him closer than he’d normally let anyone do. She didn’t know if he was finally letting some of his guard down around her, or if he was simply too tired to care. Either way, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Aside from the obvious height difference between them, and the extra muscle he’d gained along with the longer hair and said eyepatch, there wasn’t much that made him different from five years ago… At least not on the surface. 

It was the small things that made him a stranger to her. Things like the constant furrow in his brow. Things like his habit of constantly clenching his jaw. Things like the way his remaining eye reminded her of a frozen lake, its surface betraying no hint of life beneath, the ice threatening to break and let her drown in the dark depths. Once the ice broke though, would she even try fighting the current when it dragged her down?

“Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Dimitri asked, his gruff voice cutting through Byleth’s thoughts.

“I could ask the same about you. When was the last time you slept?”

“The dead await vengeance, not respite. Sleep is pointless.”

“Vengence will be pointless if you collapse mid-battle,” Byleth retorted, “What if someone were to strike you down in your weakened state?”

Dimitri turned to face her, his remaining eye set ablaze, “Nothing and no one will stop me from getting that woman’s head! And if someone does strike me down, so be it! It will be a fitting end for a monster like me.”

“Why are you so insistent on calling yourself a monster?” Byleth cried.

“Is that not what I’ve become? Look at me. Tell me you don’t see the blood staining my hands. Tell me you don’t see the depravity standing before you.”

Byleth’s eyes roved over his armor, remembering the dirt and blood that caked the dark metal after every battle. She remembered the sound of his lance piercing flesh and separating limbs and heads from torsos. She could see the soldiers coughing up blood, hear it gurgling up their throats as they choked out their last words. She couldn’t deny what he’d done. But hadn’t she done the same?

Byleth always told herself she had no choice, that she had to do what she needed to survive the war… But maybe it was all a poor excuse for her guilt. She just wanted Fodlan to return to some form of peace, yet she could always feel something dark lurking in the back of her mind during battle. When she fought, it demanded more and more from her blade. Whatever she did was not enough to take away the pain of the last few years, to take away the pain of everything that had happened to her friends and father. And maybe, like Dimitri, all she was doing was piling up corpses out of some insatiable desire for revenge. Maybe it was all out of some constantly lingering regret.

“You waste your breath on concern,” Dimitri spat, “I’ve told you before that the Dimitri you once knew is dead. He was left to rot in a cell in Fhirdiad ages ago.”

“Dimitri, I’m sor-“

“Sorry? You’re sorry? Sorry won’t-“

“It won’t bring back the dead, I know!”

Byleth heard her words echo off the cathedral wall, only to be met with Dimitri’s silence and blank gaze. She could feel tears brimming her eyes and saw her vision blur, but she continued before they could fall.  
“I know it won’t erase what they did to you! It won’t erase what happened in Fhirdiad, but I’m still sorry! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. If I could’ve been… Even if they locked me away, I would’ve been there, Dimitri”

His remaining eye shifted away from her, and briefly she thought she saw a hint of sorrow, but Byleth quickly brushed it off as a result of her tears ruining her vision.

He laughed darkly, “And now what? Do you think that now you could be some sort of saviour for me? Do you really think there is anything left to save? If that is the case, and you truly believe that, then your efforts have been wasted. There’s no point in staying, if that’s what you were hoping to achieve”

Byleth could’ve limited her time with him to brief interactions on the battlefield or terse conversation during war councils. All those times she spent forcing him to see Mercedes about wounds, or skipped out on meals in the dining hall to make sure he ate properly, she could’ve spent elsewhere with others. Maybe if she’d spent less time with him in the last few months, it would have been easier for the both of them. Maybe she would have had to suffer less, or maybe it would have been just as painful. Whatever the case, she’d already made her decision, and she refused to let him push her further away.

If he chose to walk down such a dark path, she would not let him walk it alone.

“As if you might make me a better man…” he said incredulously, turning away from her.

“Dimitri, it isn’t my responsibility to make you a better man,” Byleth said as she brushed past him toward the aisle.

Walking away, she picked up her discarded dagger. She glanced down at the blade, catching her reflection as a few stray tears dripped onto the metal. As she left the cathedral, wiping at her eyes, Byleth heard Dimitri shift in his spot. She turned to look at him over her shoulder one last time.

“That’s up to you, but I’ll be here when you’re ready. You might become a better man… And in the mean time you might make me a monster. If that’s what it takes, so be it.”


End file.
